‘What about her?’ Jules calmly pointed at Helena with the hand holding his glass.
The Girl Friday blushed and shook her head. Her father took the accusation in stride. Not possible. She knew that the Circus was somehow involved, but I never told her about either you or the meeting. I only enlisted her help the instant we heard about the mini-riot at the Dunedin Arms, because I knew I could trust her.’
‘Anyone else know?’ Yvette prodded.
The Head frowned. ‘Sarbatte’s superior, Colonel Grandon. He’s the chief of our entire Internal Security division. I wanted the building on alert just in case the opposition tried something.’
‘Isn’t he the one you sent up to the roof to pick up our two prisoners?’ Jules asked.
The entire scene froze as each of the four people in that room realized what might be happening. Decisively, the Head stabbed out a finger and activated a TV monitor on his desk. An adjustment of a dial brought an infrared view of the rooftop onto the screen.
There were now two cars on the roof. A man – it could only be Colonel Grandon was dragging an unconscious body from the d’Alembert vehicle to the other. ‘Grandon!’ the Head barked into a microphone. ‘Put that body down and report to my office immediately.’
Grandon jumped as the Head’s voice blared out at him from speakers on the rooftop. He looked around wildly for a moment; then, realizing he was still alone but being watched, he panicked. Moving quickly, he hauled the unconscious assassin over to the edge of the roof and pushed him out into air. Then, without waiting to watch the man fall ninety-three floors to his death, he ran back to his car, jumped in and fled at top speed.
CHAPTER FIVE – THE CHASE
Even before Oliver Fenton Arnold invented the subether drive that made galactic exploration possible, all of Earth except the N.A.L. was under Communism – and North America itself was being infiltrated and undermined. The real explosion of mankind into space, however, did not begin until 2013, when John Copeland discovered the uranium-rich planet Urania Four, thus assuring all mankind of cheap and virtually unlimited power. In 2016 the American anti-Communists, disgusted and alarmed by the success of the ‘do nothings’ and’ do-gooders’in blocking all effective action, left Earth en masse for the promising – and aptly named – planet, Newhope. Whereupon Communism took control of all Earth without firing a shot or launching a missile.
(vanMees, History of Civilization, Reel 21, slot 1281.)
The d’Alemberts had not waited to see what Colonel Grandon’s reaction to being discovered would be. Even as the Head was reaching for the button that turned on the rooftop speakers, their lightning reflexes had catapulted them out of their chairs and into instant action. Their common thought was to get up to the roof as quickly as they could and stop this traitor before he could do any more damage. Both of them raced across the room to the elevator tube, which they reached simultaneously.
The air cushions materialized as expected under their feet, but the ride up the tube seemed interminable. Indeed, it was nearly a minute and a half before the lift brought them to their destination – a timespan impossibly long to people who were used to measuring their movements in milliseconds.
Colonel Crandon had taken off in his own car by the time Jules and Yvette burst out of the elevator doorway. As they rushed across the open rooftop to their own vehicle, though, they heard a telltale whoosh directly over their heads. ‘Split!’ Yvette shouted, and they did just as a blaster beam from the airborne car burned a trail directly through the spots where they’d been. The searing ray scorched the edges of Jules’ clothing just a trifle as he drove forward, rolled, and got back onto his feet in one continuous motion. He never stopped running.
Colonel Crandon hesitated a moment longer above them, wondering whether to try another shot to kill – or at least delay – his pursuers. But then he realized that every second counted. Each instant he spent in target practice would mean that much more time the Head would have to mobilize the forces of SOTE – and Colonel Crandon knew precisely how vast those forces were. He would need every nanosecond to effect his escape.
While he took off into the darkness of night, Yvette and Jules scrambled across the flat roof to their car. It took them a full fifteen seconds to reach it, another five to jump in and close the doors, five seconds to start the engines, and five more to convert the craft to aerial flight. Thirty seconds in all, and another thirty added on because Grandon’s vehicle had gotten a flying start. The traitor was a full minute ahead of them.
With Jules in control, the d’Alembert car shot off the edge of the roof, accelerating as it went. Yvette was watching the sensors, trying to pick up a reading on the fugitive. ‘Got him!’ she cried at last. ‘Bearing twenty-six degrees northwest and running like a swifter with its tail on fire. We’ll have a hell of a time catching him.’
Jules grunted as he brought the craft up into the higher levels of atmosphere, so that there would be less air resistance to impair their speed. There wasn’t any planet bound vehicle faster than a Mark Forty
One Service Special – but Colonel Crandon had one, just as they did. All things being equal, the two cars should maintain their hundred and seventy kilometer gap until one or the other of them ran out of fuel.
‘Why doesn’t headquarters fire on him?’ Yvette wondered. ‘They’ve got enough firepower to down a battleship.’
‘They’re not shooting for the same reason we won’t,’ Jules said. ‘We have to get Grandon alive. Killing him won’t incapacitate the people he’s working for we have to assume he’s already told them everything he knows. On the other hand, we’d like to know some of his secrets, like who he’s working for. Killing him would lose us some valuable information.’
‘Then we’ll have one advantage in this chase,’ Yvette said. ‘His own side isn’t going to help him against us. I was a little worried they might come to his rescue.’
But the d’Alemberts were not the only ones capable of reasoning this way. Apparently, Colonel Grandon too knew that he was expendable to his side, and that he was on his own. He had to keep his distance from his pursuers; if it looked as though they were gaining on him, he was pretty sure his allies would step in and shoot him down to prevent what little he knew from falling into SOTE hands.
Therefore, while the SOTE agents behind him had to hold their fire, he did not. Putting the guidance controls on automatic, he locked his craft into its course and turned his attention to the vessel behind him.
It stubbornly kept on his tail, even though the people in it must have known they would not be able to catch up to him. He would have to do something to discourage them.
The one man he had been able to rescue from the back of the other car was beginning to come around, but the effects of even a mild stunner dosage took some time to wear off. Grandon knew the fellow would be too groggy for the next hour or so to be able to help much with the fighting. He grimaced at the realization of exactly how alone in this he was.
Taking aim at the car behind him, Grandon fired off the multiblasters that made up such a deadly part of his car’s armament. As he’d expected, those fearsome weapons had little effect on his pursuers, whose beamproof shields were as tough as his own. He had hoped that whoever was in that car would waste some time trying to dodge the beams, but they apparently knew the capabilities of their vehicle too well.
They flew straight at him, without shifting course in the slightest.
Okay, Grandon thought, setting his chin, we start to play rough. The flick of a lever brought his launchers into play, and the press of a button loaded them with bombs.
In the following vehicle, Yvette gasped as her scanners showed the bomb that had been lobbed out the rear of the fugitive car. While it had been aimed roughly at them, there was not a chance that it could have spanned the almost twenty kilometers between the vehicles. Instead, the bomb would miss them and fall on the densely populated land below, killing thousands – perhaps millions – of innocent people.
Instantly her trained reflexes came to the fore. Aiming up her own multiblasters, she fired them at the falling projectile. As the deadly beams scored a direct hit, the bomb exploded in midair, sending a shower of small and relatively harmless debris down upon the countryside. Jules, meanwhile, kept their car flying straight after Grandon’s, so there was no slackening of the chase.